BURGLARY

COUNT 1

Section 9, Theft Act 1968

(1) "A person is guilty of burglary if he enters any building or part of a building as a trespasser and with intent to commit any such offence as is mentioned in subsection (2) below: or having entered any building or part of a building as a trespasser he steals or attempts to steal anything in the building or that part of it or inflicts or attempts to inflict on any person therein any grievous bodily harm

(2) The offences referred to in subsection (1) (a) above are offences of stealing anything in the building or part of a building in question, of inflicting on any person therein any grievous bodily harm or raping any woman therein, and of doing unlawful damage to the building or anything therein.

A person guilty of burglary shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years."

' DEFEND THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR & PUNISH THE WRONGDOER '

I consider that Burglary is the crime which affects most law-abiding citizens across the country on a daily basis. This is possibly because most burglars are opportunists, often driven by the urgent requirement for funding their drugs habit, by illegally taking possession of everyday valuable items such as personal computers, plasma screens, television sets, video recorders, cash & jewellery etc. Most of these items are easily converted into hard cash by their sale for a fraction of their true value, to dishonest shopkeepers, jewellers, second hand shop owners etc or by disposal, usually after dark, to friends, associates or even strangers in a public house. In fact anyone who has ever had the time to sit in the public gallery of courts across the land, will know that when a burglar elects for trial by jury at a Crown Court, or is committed to one for trial - by a Magistrates Court, the most frequently offered defence ‘story’ is that the item(s) were bought from an unknown man in a pub. In fact this ‘defence tale’ has become predictable but laughable. If you watch the faces of individuals seated in the jury box, they will smile when the defence counsel makes reference to this unidentified, unknown man from the pub – this tells me straight away that this is not the first time the person who smiled, has sat on a jury. It is only funny in the telling however – it is no joke in the serious business of criminal trials for the same old ‘stranger in the pub’ tale to be tossed into the pot of defence ‘evidence’ – That old chestnut tale has worn very thin and magistrates and judges show their displeasure when it comes up yet again. Tragically for many victims of burglaries, there is no such thing as a ‘professional jury’ and some ordinary members of the public who are called for Jury Service are very naïve.

They may lead very simple and ordinary lives in which their view of what happens in the world outside their home environment, is largely influenced by the goings-on in their favourite soap operas, such as ‘East Enders’, ‘The Bill’, ‘Coronation Street’ or ‘Neighbours’. Therefore the situation regularly is encountered whereby jurors are by no means ‘streetwise’ and give the benefit of the doubt leading to acquittal for an offence of say, burglary, to a person who, unbeknown to them, has a list of criminal convictions for burglary and probably other offences too, ‘as long as your arm’. On occasions, Crown Court Jurors show visible surprise, shock or horror when, after they have acquitted a person, they remain in Court whilst the Judge sentences the defendant for an offence to which he pleaded guilty prior to the Jury being sworn-in, and for which they were not required to try him, and then hear about possibly his many previous convictions for the same type of offence for which they have just acquitted him. There was a time when Jury men and women were required to be persons of substance, or at least own their own home, and often complaints are made about the youth, demeanour or conduct in court of a particular juror, who these days need only be aged a minimum of 18 years. It used to be claimed that Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London/Redbridge area, had the highest acquittal rate in the country. At the time, it was said that the reason for this was because Snaresbrook Crown Court’s jury catchment area included a large area of docklands, in its original state prior to redevelopment, and being Inner City dwellers, a high proportion of selected Jurors would never find anyone guilty of any crime whatsoever. Indeed, before Jury Selection Rules were tightened up, some Jurors were themselves convicted criminals. No doubt the reader will have his or her own ideas about the truth of this.

Let’s just consider some of the possible traumas experienced and involved
in a typical house burglary, for a minute or two:

You arrive home and your heart stops. You can’t get your key to turn the
front door lock because burglars have put the catch of the lock down, to
stop you taking them by surprise before they are ready to leave with as
many of your valuables as possible. You go round the back and find broken glass everywhere, inside and out, they’ve smashed their way in (Sometimes they’ll scrape the putty out and remove the glass intact to avoid noise). You don’t know whether they’re still inside your home or have already fled with your property. Your heart is beating ‘19 to the dozen’. Plucking up the courage to go inside, perhaps, you try to call the Police but
they’ve cut the telephone wires, or just ripped them out of the walls.

 There’s a dreadful smell in the house that you left immaculate and fresh when you went someone has defecated on your carpet (some burglars do this for spite, others because they have been under such stress from being where they shouldn’t – and the fear of sudden discovery – that they lose control of bodily functions). You find your settee seat and back cushions all slashed and in tatters as they frantically searched for cash and valuables etc. There is broken glass all over the floor and possibly blood from where they cut themselves on entry (possibility of identifying them here, as blood will lead to a DNA identification in most cases, these days). Not finding as much property as they had hoped, they have smashed all your family photographs and frames from the sideboard; in sheer spite. In the kitchen, they’ve gone into the larder, pantry or cupboards and thrown everything around, looking for cash hidden in empty jars, biscuit tins etc.

Every kitchen drawer is upended onto the floor, ketchup, mayonnaise, eggs etc may have been squirted or thrown around. You may even slip over and hurt yourself unless
you’re very careful. All up the stairs and on the landing etc are mucky footprints where they’ve tramped the muck from the kitchen floor around.

If they didn’t find as much ‘loot’ as they had hoped, they may have put the plugs in and left your sink and/or bath taps running to overflow situation.
You can bet your life they’ve had every carpet up and moved every picture
or wall mirror, looking for floor and wall safes.

You’re desperate to call Police or your loved ones for help on your mobile
telephone, but by now you are shaking so much from shock, fear and
apprehension, you can’t manage to press the right keys. Your heart sinks.
You wonder if you’ll ever feel safe enough to close your eyes to sleep again
at night. How on earth can you ever get your beautiful home back to how it
was before this outrageous invasion of your privacy, which has already
destroyed your peace of mind forever? If you are a woman, you head for
your bedroom and find all of your not-so-expensive jewellery thrown
around. Your underwear drawers are emptied out on the bed, some of your
finer pieces may have been taken as trophies to ‘show the lads’. All your
best jewellery, it’s safe to say, you will never see again, some of this will have
been in your family for ‘donkeys years’ and of such sentimental value and
irreplaceable. You won’t even miss some items for days or even weeks or
months. Your fragrances, hand and moisturising creams are squirted
everywhere, beds totally in tatters where they’ve slashed your pillows and
bedding and mattress, looking for your life savings in cash, they had hoped.

 Some pillow cases will be missing – used as a quick-use tote bag to cart your
possessions away. In the old days, the Police would have been able to have
sent someone round to make sure the burglars aren’t hiding in the loft and
to prepare a list of all the damage, value of stolen property, descriptions of
it etc.,and questioned you as to whether it could have been someone you
know or once knew. However that’s all gone forever, apparently. If you call
in the Police Station tomorrow though, you can have a Police reference
number to enter up on your burglary insurance claim form! You go to the
garage to fetch the vacuum cleaner. The garage is empty, the car has gone,
you left the car keys on the hook in the hall. Your husband catches the train
or bus to work. When you try to phone him at work, you’re put on the Call
Centre carousel menu and lose precious time trying to press the right
option number to speak to a human being. (You would give anything at this
stage to have Lords Woolf, Irvine and Faulkener, Tony Blair or David
Blunkett walk in and see the state of the place!) Absolute nightmares – all
too frequent occurrences these days. If you’re cynical, you’ll be wondering
what sort of security situations Lord Chancellors and Lord Chief Justices
have at home - Razor wire, 10feet high walls, electronic gates, movement
detectors, armed Police, Panic Buttons, guard dogs, direct-to-nearest-Police
Station alarms, PIR searchlights etc.

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Two Appeal Court judges have been accused of “delivering a slap in the face
to victims of crime” after letting a disgraced antiques dealer escape from justice without paying a penny of his fine for handling stolen goods. Lawrence Perovetz had tried to make thousands of pounds selling heirlooms worth a total of £130,000 after they were stolen from the Earl of Chichester and another family, by a gang of professional burglars. Perovetz’s original trial judge decided to be lenient, after hearing that his wife was suffering from cancer and that he may have committed the offences to help pay for her
treatment in America! He walked free from Salisbury Crown Court in March 2003 with
an 18-month suspended jail sentence, a £4,000 costs order against him and a £25,000 fine. Mr Justice Fulford and Mr Justice Aikens, however, have decided that this was not lenient enough. After hearing in
May 2004 that Perovetz had no money, and that his previous good reputation had been ruined, they quashed his fine completely. The verdict has stunned the Earl of Chichester. He said, “He’s better off than you or I if we overstayed on a parking meter or drove at 35mph in a 30mph zone.

They could have reduced the fine to, say, the £40 we pay for overstaying on a parking meter. Instead, they quashed it completely, and the man walks away totally free with no punishment. What a grievous insult to the thousands of cancer victims and their families who struggle and suffer to stay honest. What a slap in the face to the victims of crime and the police. The police see days and weeks of effort in the fight against crime go for nothing. How deeply depressing for the victims of burglaries. They often don’t report break-ins because they think nobody will be caught. Then they see that when the police do manage to catch someone for a related crime, some half-witted judges decide to let them off. I sincerely hope that they retire.”

Lord Chichester lost antiques worth about £1million, most of them collected by his grandfather in the 1900’s, when the thieves broke into his home at Little Durnford Manor on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, in June 2002. The raiders tore down a curtain and used it to carry away heirlooms including rare Meissen porcelain figurines, vases and bowls, two clocks and 27 18th century gold snuffboxes. Perovetz. a 53-year-old Briton who had
been living in Florida, was arrested on a business trip to England in July 2002, after selling four of the snuffboxes, worth a total of £80,000, and a silver peacock and silver ladle stolen during another burglary in Witney, Oxfordshire.

The antiques trade had been warned to look out for the missing items, and a dealer who bought from Perovetz in good faith, contacted the police when he realised that they had been stolen. Perovetz denied the offences but was convicted of two counts of handling stolen goods by a jury at Salisbury Crown Court. He received Legal Aid throughout
the five-day trial and his subsequent appeal. The antiques, later valued at £130,000, were the only items recovered from the burglaries, leaving stolen property worth £1.87million still missing. Wiltshire police had to spend nearly a year disproving Perovetz’s lies about acquiring the antiques from an American vendor. They used telephone and computer analysis and liaised with the Special Branch to prove that his story was a fabrication.
One Wiltshire officer said that he could not be openly critical of judges. “A lot of hard work went into that man. We have the greatest sympathy for his wife and accept that he no longer has a good reputation. It’s just disappointing that he does appear to have had the biggest part of his punishment removed.”

Perovetz worked in the family firm H. Perovetz, a central London silver
dealership until the company was dissolved in 1995. Shortly after he moved
with his family from north London to Florida, to secure the best treatment
for his wife, who had breast cancer and had been told that she had 18 months to live. He was unavailable for comment but his solicitor said: “I appreciate that people lost property but he spent nine months awaiting trial on stringent bail, unable to leave the country, unable to see his wife who was undergoing gruelling chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He has been subjected to a suspended term of imprisonment, which is a
punishment. He has not escaped justice; he has not got away scot-free.” Asked whetherhe felt remorse for his crimes, she said: “I don’t think I can answer that question. He still maintains that he is innocent. He is currently in the US caring for his wife, who sadly has a very short time to live.”

Norman Brennan, the director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: “I despair
of Appeal Court judges. They should get their acts together and ensure that
those who cause devastation to the law-abiding public by their criminal
behaviour, are told in no uncertain terms that they will not be tolerated.”
When contacted by the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Justice Aikens, 55, said: “I
cannot possibly make any comment on particular cases.” Mr Justice
Fulford, 51, was unavailable for comment.